“Why should we be governed by people long dead? … In any case, the group that ratified the Constitution included just a small subset of the society; it excluded all women, the vast majority of African Americans, many of those without property, and numerous others who were not permitted to vote.” Cass Sunstein

“we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.” Signers of TheDeclaration of Independence

I am not aware of Barack Obama or Cass Sunstein pledging their lives, their fortunes or their sacred honor to preserve the US.

I received the following article in an email today:

“In the world of Obama there cannot be any dissent or criticism of the master designer (no, not God – President Barack Obama) and any attempts to impugn the Obama plans for “change” must be demolished. So if negativity comes from the internet , then of course the blogosphere must be added to litany of government control and censorship.

The recent Obama intended appointment of Cass Sunstein, a Harvard Law professor, to the position of head of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs is the next nail in the coffin of the First Amendment. In this position Sunstein will have powers that are unprecedented and very far reaching; not merely mind-boggling but with explicit ability to use the courts to stifle free speech if it opposes Obama policies. In particular, Sunstein thinks that the bloggers have been “rampaging out of control” and that “new laws need to be written” to contain them. Advance copies of Sunstein’s new book, “On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done,” have gone out to reviewers ahead of its September publication date, but considering the new position to which Sunstein is about to be appointed, the powers with which Sunstein will be endowed are very, very, troubling.

The Wall Street Journal reported that “the post wields outsize power. It oversees regulations throughout the government, from the Environmental Protection Agency to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Obama aides have said the job will be crucial as the new administration overhauls financial-services regulations, attempts to pass universal health care and tries to forge a new approach to controlling emissions of greenhouse gases.””

“Sunstein will be another Obama “Czar” but will really be the chief regulator of what can or cannot appear on the internet. It is very scary that the person who will be in charge of public cyberspace believes that – “Whether you’re a blogger or the York Times or a Web hosting service – you should be held responsible even for what your comments say.” Currently you’re immune under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. “Reasonable people,” he says, “might object that this is not the right rule,” though he admits that imposing liability for comments on service providers would be “a considerable burden.””

I decided to find out more about this radical law professor with a long time association with Obama. Below are a collection of quotes attributed to Cass Sunstein. It is beleived that these quotes are accurate.

Second Amendment
“Consider the view that the Second Amendment confers an individual right to own guns. The view is respectable, but it may be wrong, and prominent specialists reject it on various grounds.”

“The National Association of Broadcasters and others with similar economic interests
typically use the First Amendment in precisely the same way the National Rifle
Association uses the Second Amendment. We should think of the two camps as
jurisprudential twins.”

Hunting & Animal Rights
“We ought to ban hunting”

“[Humans’] willingness to subject animals to unjustified suffering will be seen … as a form of unconscionable barbarity… morally akin to slavery and the mass extermination of human beings.”

Free Speech

“A legislative effort to regulate broadcasting in the interest of democratic principles should not be seen as an abridgment of the free speech guarantee.”

“I have argued in favor of a reformulation of First Amendment law. The overriding goal of the reformulation is to reinvigorate processes of democratic deliberation, by ensuring greater attention to public issues and greater diversity of views.”

“Consider the “fairness doctrine,” now largely abandoned but once requiring radio and television broadcasters:
…[I]n light of astonishing economic and technological changes, we must doubt whether, as interpreted, the constitutional guarantee of free speech is adequately serving democratic goals. It is past time for a large-scale reassessment of the appropriate role of the First Amendment in the democratic process.”

Taxes
“In what sense in the money in our pockets and bank accounts fully ‘ours’? Did we earn it by our own autonomous efforts? Could we have inherited it without the assistance of probate courts? Do we save it without the support of bank regulators? Could we spend it if there were no public officials to coordinate the efforts and pool the resources of the community in which we live?… Without taxes there would be no liberty. Without taxes there would be no property. Without taxes, few of us would have any assets worth defending. [It is] a dim fiction that some people enjoy and exercise their rights without placing any burden whatsoever on the public fisc. … There is no liberty without dependency. That is why we should celebrate tax day …”

Second Bill of Rights
“My major aim in this book is to uncover an important but neglected part of America’s heritage: the idea of a second bill of rights. In brief, the second bill attempts to protect both opportunity and security, by creating rights to employment, adequate food and clothing, decent shelter, education, recreation, and medical care.”

“Much of the time, the United States seems to have embraced a confused and pernicious form of individualism. This approach endorses rights of private property and freedom of contract, and respects political liberty, but claims to distrust “government intervention” and insists that people must fend for themselves. This form of so-called individualism is incoherent, a tangle of confusions.”

“For better or worse, the Constitution’s framers gave no thought to including social and economic guarantees in the bill of rights.”